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11.7.12

Sandusky, Boy Scouts Canada, and revived memories of Mount
Cashel and the Roman Catholic church – there are a lot of people reading and
thinking about child sexual abuse these days.

We’ve come a long way since the coverups of earlier decades,
but as the Scouts Canada controversy shows, many people still don’t understand how
or why child sexual abuse is reported.

There seems to be a misconception that a child is abused,
tells a trusted adult, and the situation is dealt with in the courts and
through the judicial system. In actual fact only a small percentage of children
disclose their abuse in childhood. And of those that do, a large percentage are
faced with an adult who either doesn’t believe them, doesn’t respond
appropriately, or doesn’t take the required action.

“Why didn’t they tell?” is a common reaction to allegations
of past sexual abuse. Some even take the position that if a child didn’t tell
when it was happening, then it is possible it never happened at all. Marketing campaigns aimed at children – badly aimed in the opinion of one survivor – tell
children to disclose. But we have done little as a society to address the real
issue – that of the bystanders who suspect but never say a word.

"But why didn’t you say something?" people ask; and,
unintentionally or not, their tone often incriminates. Perhaps that’s because
they only see me, the adult—not the five, nine or 13-year-old I once was. While
‘good touch, bad touch’ talks may help, children can’t be expected to carry the
burden of awareness and prevention.

And yet this is often what we ask and even expect them to
do. We’ve all seen the ads directed at children telling them that they should
tell someone about their abuse. But as one survivor says, “no child would
notice those ads. There are no flashy colours, bright toys, tasty treats. When
I was a kid I noticed Toucan Sam and the Cocopuffs rabbit, not some sad-eyed kid
talking on the TV.”

And no advertising campaign will ever make up for all the
inhibitions against disclosure. As that same survivor, who choses to remain
anonymous says:

Childhood is a confusing time. We’re told that hitting isn’t
right but our parents spank us and friends hit us and no one suffers any
repercussions. We’re told that stealing isn’t right, but Daddy brings home pens
from the office and Mommy picks up a dime dropped in a parking lot. There’s no
gray zone in a child’s mind. What adults do is right. What they say is hardly
ever true. Even if an adult had sat down with me and said ‘no one should ever
touch you like that,’ I would’ve taken it in the same way I took in statements
that my brothers shouldn’t hit me. They did. That was life. Should and shouldn’t
didn’t enter into it.

And the fact is, between abuses, I didn’t think about it. Or
tried not to. If my abusers weren’t around, I could live a ‘normal’ life. And
if they were around, they were surrounded by adults that facilitated them and
turned a blind eye. Of course I knew it was wrong. It hurt. It terrified me.
But so did getting my scraped knee cleaned. I could normalise the experience. I
had to in order to survive.

Expecting children to disclose abuse is ridiculous. Looking
at the numbers from Scouts Canada, of 486 cases of abuse reported since 1947,
328 were already known to authorities before Scouts Canada became aware. Those
328 cases are likely instances where an individual became known to authorities
through other actions such as purchasing child pornography, or where an adult
came forward years later to report abuse.

In a study released by
Save the Children Sweden, titled “Why Didn’t They Tell Us: On Sexual Abuse inChild Pornography,” authors looked at the cases of 22 children who had been
sexually abused and were old enough and physically able to talk about it. None
of the children self-reported the abuse. Most of them suffered at least a year
of abuse.
“The children had kept this to themselves and had not talked about this to
parents, friends, siblings, relatives or to some other adult. This is a very
compelling argument that children do not at all, or very reluctantly, talk
about sexual abuse. This is also a very formidable contrast to the idea
that children invent or make false accusations of sexual abuse.”

Authors found that the average amount
of time the children – and this was a small subset of children whose abuse was
later discovered without them reporting – lived with their “secret” was 44
months. Other reports and studies have found an average of five years before a
child reports any abuse activities. This does not mean that all cases are
reported within five years, but that of that small percentage of cases that are
disclosed by the victim, it takes approximately five years for the disclosure
to happen.

Those are not the important numbers,
though. The important numbers are those like the 129 files on reported abuse
from 1947 to 2011 that Boy Scouts Canada never passed on to authorities. Or if
that’s too hard to remember, think of the number three. Only about one in three
children report their abuse. Most have to report it to at least three adults
before someone takes action.

In every case of child sexual abuse,
there is someone who knows, who suspects, or who just feels funny about it all.
Predators groom children who are easily taken in. They also groom the adults
around them by making it hard to believe they would do such things. But adults
have better ability to discern when they are being manipulated. Adults have a responsibility
to care for vulnerable children. Children do not have a responsibility to take
care of themselves.

“I did tell,” one survivor says, “I
told one person. Maybe I didn’t use the
right words. Maybe I didn’t make it clear enough. But what child can make
anything clear? She didn’t do anything about it. I assumed no one would. So I
just lived with it.”

Children shouldn’t have to “live with
it,” and they shouldn’t be made to feel like it is their responsibility to stop
it. It is our responsibility to step out of the bystander role and take action
for our children. According to a CBC report, of those 129 unreported Boy Scout
cases, commissioner Steve Kent said “We found examples of individuals
being unsure of how to report abuse, or whether it was necessary to report. In
some cases, an offence was thought to be inappropriate for a Scouts leader, but
not necessarily criminal in nature, and therefore did not require reporting to
authorities.”

That’s not good enough. Maybe
instead of asking why children don’t tell and trying to teach them to tell, it’s
time we concentrated more effort on making it clear that adults must tell.

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